Eclectic and striving never to follow paths into ruts, the OF Blog focuses on essays, reviews, interviews, and other odds and ends that might be of interest to fans of both literary and speculative fiction. Now with a cute owl for your enjoyment.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

For many, I suppose this is the only list of mine that matters to them. They want to know the "best of the best," I suppose. Never mind that with few exceptions that this list focuses on novels (several of the anthologies and collections, not to mention the graphic novels, are at least on par with several of the books that appear here). People want a list of favorites among those released this year.

So here is a list. Outside of the top 5, there is no order to the remaining 20 books on this list. It easily could have been 50. Several of the books that appear here will appeal to several types of readers, but it's highly likely that several of the books here will be antithetical to the reading preferences of several readers. Yes, there really isn't any epic or secondary-world fantasies (with one semi-exception) on this list. While I read them, I didn't get as much enjoyment out of those as I did out of other books. So while I did enjoy offerings from R. Scott Bakker, Steven Erikson, and David Anthony Durham (to name three of several authors of epic fantasies that have graced several such lists from bloggers that appear in my blogroll and in the blogrolls of those over there), I just could not justify their appearance at the expense of several others here.

But for those of you who like several genres of fiction, perhaps this list will offer something for you. Six out of the eight mimetic fictions that I listed my earlier post today appear here. So do works from each of the other categories I've posted over the past four days. Hopefully, this list will greater reflect the diversity not just of gender or national origin, but also of the many fine narrative modes in which talented authors have told their tales for our enjoyment and edification this year. Each of the books that appears below will be re-read in the near future, some doubtless several times in the coming years. May you find as much enjoyment out of these books and others that you've read this year or in the future that I did from these during 2009.

History, or rather its root of "story," can be a cruel, deceitful monster. People inspired by one telling of the past may go forth and butcher their neighbors, just because of stories that may not ultimately be "true." Memories can be haunting by themselves, but when infused with stories from the past that are tinged to place might and right on one's side, who can fathom the depths to which one may be self-deluded or, ultimately, betrayed? What may seem insignificant in the present may have antecedents that were considered to be momentous, or perhaps the mundane present can give birth to unimaginable futures. History's treacheries may inspire or crush societies, but no society ever truly remains static or totally free of being enslavement to (false?) memories of the past.

In Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris Cycle, the various false faces that history and memory can wear are interwoven into the fabric of these tales. From the myths surrounding the razing of the gray cap city of Cinsorium to the fates of Samuel Tonsure, Voss Bender, and Duncan Shriek, there are layers upon layers of shaded meaning. What is happening between the lines? Which writers, if any, manage to follow that old deceiving adage of historians, wie es eigentlich gewesen? In my recent re-reading of VanderMeer's first two Ambergris books, City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword, I found myself referring back to this adage of Ranke's. How can one even hope to believe that "how it actually has been" can be found in narratives like that of Janice and Duncan Shriek? Who is "lying," and who merely is self-deceived?

In the concluding book to the Ambergris Cycle, Finch, the issues surrounding the relationships between past and present are brought to the fore in VanderMeer's apparently most straightforward narrative yet. Set around 100 years after the events in Shriek: An Afterword, Finch is on the surface a noir-like murder mystery. Ambergris, after decades of internecine warfare between two leading trading companies, fell under the control of the gray caps in the Rising six years before the present story. The city, always in a fragile state, has become a brutal occupation zone. Passages such as the one quoted above pepper the narrative. Humans are herded into quasi-concentration camps or they are subdued by the gray caps by means of hallucinogenic mushrooms that provide euphoria and substance to the addicts. Bands of altered human quislings, called Partials, spy on the population, trying to stamp out the last vestiges of revolutionary activity inspired by the enigmatic Lady in Blue. Ambergris is rotting on both the inside and out, or perhaps being on the verge of a transformation may be a more apt description.

***

Finch is certainly one of the best novels that I have read this year. Despite the minor quibbles that I noted above, there is so much that VanderMeer did "right" in terms of balancing narrative, characterization, and themes that I have found myself thinking about some of the issues related to this novel (and to the series as a whole - see the recent interview I conducted with VanderMeer) for several days now. Finch is a novel that I believe would appeal to a wide range of readers, from mystery fans to lovers of surreal fiction to those readers who want to "think" and "feel" simultaneously. It's just a damn good book and I suspect future re-readings will only strengthen my appreciation for what VanderMeer managed to accomplish in this novel. Most highly recommended.

For the reasons noted above, Finch is the best 2009 release that I read this year.

Shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize, one of Great Britain's most prestigious literary awards, A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book is a sprawling, 675 page historical novel that spans from the last years of the Victorian Age to the immediate aftermath of World War I. At the center of the novel is the family of children's novelist Olive Wellwood and how their lives, full of bittersweet romances, flights of fancy, and tragic events, relate to the seven stories that Olive pens about them. During the quarter-century that the novel spans, The Children's Book takes an interesting dual-narrative approach that serves to weave a story that is much stronger as a whole than if it were to be considered by its component parts.

The Children's Book can be read on two levels. First, there is the complex narrative of the Wellwood children and the adopted runaway Philip. Byatt does an excellent job fleshing out the characters and their unique traits. The scene quoted above serves as a microcosm of what transpires between the pragmatic Tom and the idealist Charles (later, Karl). Byatt breathes life into these characters, so as Tom, Charles, their siblings and Philip grow into adulthood, the reader becomes immersed in what they are experiencing. From every hope held to every betrayal done, the Wellwood children and Philip live lives that hint at another interpretation of Dream that differs from those given by Tom and Charles. Some might find Byatt's treatment of these characters to be overly bleak and dour, but considering the second narrative level from which this novel could be interpreted, I found the sometimes-brutal, heart-wrenching agonies that the children experience to be suitable for the parallels that Byatt created to their times.

In addition to the novel working as a tragic look into the lost innocence of childhood, The Children's Book works as an excellent historical novel that presents a vivid image of the British Empire just before the calamities of the 20th century. From the idealistic Fabians to their darker, more violent anarchist brethren, the Great Britain of 1895 to 1913 was a study in contrasts. Charles/Karl's flight into the world of the anarchists, his rejection of his comfortable (and somewhat hypocritical) bourgeois upbringing parallels the rise of the Guides in England and the Wandervogel movement among German youth in the two decades before World War I. Byatt depicts the world of opulent decadence almost pitch-perfectly, as the reader is immersed in a mindscape that correlates almost perfectly with the imagines of a genteel, tamed landscape where the bourgeois dared to dream that eternal prosperity was about to emerge. Some dreams, when shattered, are damning to those betrayed by them.

Although The Children's Book lost out to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (which appears in the list below), I found it to be the slightly more enjoyable and better-written book of the two.

The opening story to Terrence Holt's debut story collection In the Valley of the Kings, " 'Ο Λογοσ", serves as a represenative piece. The opening paragraph quoted above sets the stage for an apocalyptic tale to follow, as one by one, "word" by "word," people are infected with a new plague that is carried not by microbes, but instead by the etching of "the word" on their flesh. Holt's matter-of-fact, clinical prose (he has alternated between being a writing instructor, medical doctor, and storywriter for the past 15 years) is all the more chilling here because the reader knows something dreadful is happening, but the prose purposely understates this in order to allow the reader's imagination to create more and more dreadful consequences for what is transpiring within the story. By the time the final paragraph is reached, the tension has built to the point that one begins to wonder if the narrator has gone mad...or if we will.

The second story, "My Father's Heart," is much shorter (5 pages compared to the 16 devoted for the first story), but it too contains an unsettling image:

I have raged at it of late: Leech, I cry: Blooksucker. It burps clear saline in mild protest; innocence sits on every valve. I am not taken in. It has not been so many years since I have seen it raging in its turn, swollen to the size of a dirigible, as full of gas and fire, stopping raffic across four lanes of Sixth Avenue. A cab driver had refused to carry it: "I don't haul meat." I spent the balance of that day in terror, cradling the jar in my lap (we took a bus), looking into it each time the saline sloshed. It refused to look up. (p. 29)

The imagery would have been at home in an Edgar Allan Poe story; the juxtaposition of the mudane (taking the bus) and the unreal (the heart being sentient and prone to outbursts) serving to underscore the strangeness of the situation. The resolution to this story is emotional, not as it was in the first, but in a way that reminded me of how family members, whether or not their hearts literally act for themselves, clash and bond over crises.

***

But the end of dreams and self-delusions is not necessarily bad. In many respects, the final paragraph to "Apocalyse" could serve as the epigraph for In the Valley of the Kings:

But before the end we will speak once more, of everything that matters: of the brightness of the moon; of the birds still flying dark against the sky; of the man who brought me here; of the hours that she waited; of what wwe would name the child; of the grace of everything that dies; of the love that moves the sun and other stars. (p. 223)

Through it all, In the Valley of the Kings is a true tour de force of exploring the human condition(s). At times, I was reminded of the best of Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Jorge Luis Borges, among others. Holt's prose tantalizes. It hints, it promises, but at the end there are no true revelations within the text itself. It is up to the reader to fill in the spots purposely left blank. It is up to the reader to provide meaning, to establish hope, to ward off despair. Holt's collection simply is great, provocative storytelling at its best and it deserves serious consideration for any and all awards for which it may be eligible.

In the Valley of the Kings was not only the best short fiction collection that I read this year, it was almost the best book period.

Caitlín R. Kiernan's latest novel, The Red Tree (August 2009) is in turns a pseudo-autographical novel, a psychological portrait of a first-person narrator on the verge of madness, and a sometimes terrifying mystery that surrounds a particular red oak tree in Rhode Island. The Red Treecontains several layers of framing stories, from the introductory and concluding passages that set up the tale of the main narrator, Sarah Crowe (who has several attributes of Kiernan herself, as well as several fictitious ones lest people begin to think that the author inserted herself into this story), to the epistolary-like journal entries that Sarah writes about her experiences in Rhode Island and her discovery of a decades-old journal (which serves as a third level for this rich, multilayered story). In readingThe Red Tree, I was reminded at times of two other books released this decade, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and Elizabeth Hand's Generation Loss, as there are elements of each (Danielewski's adroit use of nesting framing stories to hide in plain view what was transcurring; Hand's use of the pseudo-autographical novel to blur the lines between the real and the unreal) in Kiernan's tale. Thankfully, Kiernan takes these possible influences and crafts a story that feels original and "real."

The red oak mentioned in the title has a mysterious, possibly supernatural dark past that stretches back to the colonial period. Over the centuries, farmers have been killed by wolves there, not to mention it being associated with a serial killer from the early 20th century. It is this sense of mystery that envelops Sarah, a writer who has recently fled Atlanta and a failed relationship with a lover who has recently committed suicide. Recently relocated to Rhode Island, she now occupies an old house that she shares with a mysterious painter named Constance. When going through an old chifforobe (the inclusion of such a subtle nod to Southern writers such as Harper Lee and Flannery O'Connor, as stories of theirs revolved around such a hybrid piece of furniture), Sarah discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house's former tenant, a parapsychologist who appeared to be obsessed with the red oak tree and its past.

The strength of The Red Tree is not establishing the horror elements, as one could argue that what might constitute "horror" largely takes place off-stage. Rather, it is with Kiernan's portrayal of Sarah and how her past haunts her. Kiernan's use of an epistolary narrative technique enables the reader to get a fractured, haunting look into the past of Sarah and how her past relationship with her former lover "Amanda" has come to haunt her.

***

The lines between what was transpiring with the red oak blur with what is going on with the interactions Sarah is having with the dead journalist's notes, her odd association with Constance, and her constant memories of the traumatic end to her relationship with Amanda. In places, it is hard to tell what Sarah is dreaming and what is "real" to her, which serves to add depth to the story and how the reader may interpret what is happening both "on screen" and off.

Kiernan is an outstanding stylist and she masterfully weaves the various framing stories mentioned above into a compelling, gripping tale that will haunt my thoughts for some time to come. The Red Tree is one of the better psychological/horror novels that I have read in quite some time and despite the fierce competition, I suspect it'll earn a spot on my Best of 2009 lists come December. Highly recommended.

Well, yes, it did end up earning a spot on my Best of 2009 lists, fairly high, too, at #4.

These religious celebrations are mentioned here because they inform and add layers of depth to Brian Evenson's latest book, Last Days. Throughout this book, itself an expansion upon 2003's The Brotherhood of Mutilation (which comprises the first part of this novel), references to St. Paul, to his visions of how to lead a holy life and especially to his views on the coming end to the world, abound. Today in this world, there are those who take the words of prophets and other religious men so literally that we see such a self-effacement taking place as to make outsiders wonder what could move them to inflict such pain and suffering upon themselves and upon others. Evenson addresses some of those questions in Last Days, but as it is with trying to grasp the mentalité of those whose very world-views are so alien to ours, there are times where the narrative falters and the reader is left confronted with the raw, visceral "otherness" that has fallen across adherents to such extreme manifestations of religious faith.

Last Days begins with detective Kline, himself a recent victim to a severing of his right hand, being approached by a secretive religious cult that revolves around the passage of Matthew 5:29-30 referring to if one's hand causes one to commit sin, that such a member ought to be severed and cast off in order for one to remain righteous. Instead of telling this in a direct fashion, Evenson uses the first paragraph not just to foreshadow this first contact, but also to go beyond it and to hint at the meanings embedded with the story...

***

Here, Kline's role has shifted from an investigator, a seeker of truth, to a vengeful quasi-angel of death. Such a role inflicts damage upon the psyche and Kline's transformation reflects heavily upon this. However, the narrative suffers as well, as with Kline becoming more of an initiator of violence (even as he himself is being tracked down by the non-Pauline cultists) than a seeker of knowledge, the tension between what is understood and what is happening falters. But perhaps it is fitting that in an apocalyptic atmosphere, that the original meaning of apocalypse, "revealing," comes to the fore. While the Kline that closes Last Days differs greatly from the one that opened it, the journey, stumbling as it does in places as the violent acts threaten to numb the reader's reaction to the horrific developments, ultimately is worth the effort. The world in its present form has passed away and those who were not weeping are now left weeping as time runs out.

Evenson's use of vivid (sometimes close to too vivid) imagery, along with the psychological elements that I noted in my original review, ensured that Last Days would be part of my 25 Favorite Fictions.

Although these 2009 in Review posts are meant to focus on 2009 releases, there were hundreds of great books that I read for the first time this year that would have made most any Best of _____ lists of mine if I had read them in that publication year. So for the first time, I thought that I would list 50 worthy reads, in no particular order other than a rough chronological reading order:

1. Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics

2. Milorad Pavić, Second Body/Drugo Telo

3. George R.R. Martin, Fevre Dream

4. Erich Maria Remarque, The Night in Lisbon

5. Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

6. Joanna Russ, The Female Man

7. Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis

8. Milorad Pavić, Last Love in Constantinople

9. Robert Holdstock, Mythago Wood

10. Ken Grimwood, Replay

11. Naguib Mahfouz, Palace Walk

12. Paul Auster, New York Trilogy (omnibus)

13. Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor

14. Don DeLillo, Underworld

15. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

16. Shirely Jackson, Come With Me

17. Erich Maria Remarque, The Road Back

18. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

19. Clive Barker, The Books of Blood

20. Sergio Toppi, Sharaz-De: Vols. 1-2

21. David Toscana, El último lector (released in English translation in 2009 as The Last Reader)

22. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

23. Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

24. Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffmann

25. Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories

26. Walter Moers, The City of Dreaming Books

27. Steve Erickson, Zeroville

28. Lewis Grizzard, It Wasn't Always Easy, But I Sure Had Fun

29. Daniel Abraham, An Autumn War

30. Goran Petrović, Atlas descrito por el cielo

31. Angela Carter, Saints and Strangers

32. Charles Finney, The Circus of Dr. Lao

33. Adolfo Bioy Casares, Diario de la guerra del cerdo

34. John Gardner, Grendel

35. David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus

36. Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter

37. Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword

38. Brian Evenson, Altmann's Tongue

39. Bradford Morrow (ed.), Conjunctions 51: The Death Issue

40. Stewart O'Nan, Last Night at the Lobster

41. Thomas Ligotti, My Work is Not Yet Done

42. Nicola Griffith, Slow River

43. Dino Buzzati, Poema a fumetti

44. Ismail Kadere, The Palace of Dreams

45. Thomas Glavinic, Night Work

46. Guillermo Arriaga, El búfalo de la noche

47. Dino Buzzati, Il deserto dei Tartari

48. Peter Beagle, A Fine & Private Place/The Last Unicorn (omnibus)

49. A.S. Byatt, Possession

50. Neal Stephenson, Anathem

And for a true anti-classic:

Jim Theis, Eye of Argon

Perhaps some of these will catch your fancy? Shortly (or at halftime of the UT-VT game), I'll post my 25 Favorite Fictions of 2009.

Although the original purpose of this blog was to cover recent and classic works of speculative fiction, my first literary love has always been that nebulous thing called "literary" or "mimetic" fiction. Recently, I have returned to reading these "mimetic" fictions and have discovered several recent releases that I like. Among the fictions I've read this year are two books shortlisted for the Man Booker Award (including the winner), one National Book Award winner, one novel that won several prestigious French awards before it was released in English-translation this year, as well as a posthumous release of a book whose fate had been debated for over 30 years, among others.

It was a great year of reading for those who want something set in the "real" world, with "real" characters and "real" situations. It was very difficult to choose a favorite from the eight books listed below, as almost all of these would be a leading contender for top book in any given year. But for those of you leery of "mimetic" fiction, these books also contain some damn good storytelling.

Shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize, one of Great Britain's most prestigious literary awards, A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book is a sprawling, 675 page historical novel that spans from the last years of the Victorian Age to the immediate aftermath of World War I. At the center of the novel is the family of children's novelist Olive Wellwood and how their lives, full of bittersweet romances, flights of fancy, and tragic events, relate to the seven stories that Olive pens about them. During the quarter-century that the novel spans, The Children's Book takes an interesting dual-narrative approach that serves to weave a story that is much stronger as a whole than if it were to be considered by its component parts.

The Children's Book can be read on two levels. First, there is the complex narrative of the Wellwood children and the adopted runaway Philip. Byatt does an excellent job fleshing out the characters and their unique traits. The scene quoted above serves as a microcosm of what transpires between the pragmatic Tom and the idealist Charles (later, Karl). Byatt breathes life into these characters, so as Tom, Charles, their siblings and Philip grow into adulthood, the reader becomes immersed in what they are experiencing. From every hope held to every betrayal done, the Wellwood children and Philip live lives that hint at another interpretation of Dream that differs from those given by Tom and Charles. Some might find Byatt's treatment of these characters to be overly bleak and dour, but considering the second narrative level from which this novel could be interpreted, I found the sometimes-brutal, heart-wrenching agonies that the children experience to be suitable for the parallels that Byatt created to their times.

In addition to the novel working as a tragic look into the lost innocence of childhood, The Children's Book works as an excellent historical novel that presents a vivid image of the British Empire just before the calamities of the 20th century. From the idealistic Fabians to their darker, more violent anarchist brethren, the Great Britain of 1895 to 1913 was a study in contrasts. Charles/Karl's flight into the world of the anarchists, his rejection of his comfortable (and somewhat hypocritical) bourgeois upbringing parallels the rise of the Guides in England and the Wandervogel movement among German youth in the two decades before World War I. Byatt depicts the world of opulent decadence almost pitch-perfectly, as the reader is immersed in a mindscape that correlates almost perfectly with the imagines of a genteel, tamed landscape where the bourgeois dared to dream that eternal prosperity was about to emerge. Some dreams, when shattered, are damning to those betrayed by them.

Paul Auster, Invisible

Invisibleis one of those novels that starts out in a normal fashion and then suddenly, the perspectives shifts and what you might think you understood after reading the first few chapters changes radically. It is a story that spans several decades and is told via several points of view. What the reader might think is "true" based on one section turns out to be incomplete or misleading after another voice is heard.

The overall effect is to create a mystery surrounding the goals and desires of a single character. When the final word is read and the book is closed, it was for me as if a bout of literary vertigo had subsided. I still find myself, weeks later, contemplating what Auster had achieved here, in what perhaps is his finest work since his accalimed New York trilogy.

Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones

Not only was The Kindly Ones one of the best translated fictions I read in 2009, but its mixture of historical tragedy and fictional desires of a truly depraved (and ultimately, unreliable) character made for an engrossing read, even though the book's near-900 pages might seem daunting at first to readers. Littell mostly succeeded in capturing the trainwreck fascination many people have with the Holocaust and the motley crew that instigated it. Although several scenes from the book might seem to be unpolished and raw, I found that it added to the overall atmosphere of the novel and that it helped convey the messages that Littell seemed to want readers to take from this mostly fine novel.

Other Worthy Reads:

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City

Vladimir Nabokov, The Original of Laura

Monica Ali, In the Kitchen

Any works of "literary" or "mimetic" fiction released this year that you believe ought to be considered as among the year's best?

If the 2009 anthologies I've read were mostly solid, competent works that barely stood out from each other, the 2009 short story collections I read this year present a different problem. This might have been one of the best years in recent years I've had in terms of reading recently-released single-author collections. When a just-released (in Spanish) collection of Julio Cortázar's previously-uncollected stories and prose non-fiction finishes eighth out of nine and it's a damn good collection, what might be said about the collections I ranked above it?

Perhaps "hot damn" ought to be the phrase to describe this company of great works? Or perhaps "holy shit, these are good!" might be more apt? Regardless, the three collections that I talk about at length contain stories that were almost uniformly very excellent and at worst just merely very damn good.

The opening story to Terrence Holt's debut story collection In the Valley of the Kings, " 'Ο Λογοσ", serves as a represenative piece. The opening paragraph quoted above sets the stage for an apocalyptic tale to follow, as one by one, "word" by "word," people are infected with a new plague that is carried not by microbes, but instead by the etching of "the word" on their flesh. Holt's matter-of-fact, clinical prose (he has alternated between being a writing instructor, medical doctor, and storywriter for the past 15 years) is all the more chilling here because the reader knows something dreadful is happening, but the prose purposely understates this in order to allow the reader's imagination to create more and more dreadful consequences for what is transpiring within the story. By the time the final paragraph is reached, the tension has built to the point that one begins to wonder if the narrator has gone mad...or if we will.

The second story, "My Father's Heart," is much shorter (5 pages compared to the 16 devoted for the first story), but it too contains an unsettling image:

I have raged at it of late: Leech, I cry: Blooksucker. It burps clear saline in mild protest; innocence sits on every valve. I am not taken in. It has not been so many years since I have seen it raging in its turn, swollen to the size of a dirigible, as full of gas and fire, stopping raffic across four lanes of Sixth Avenue. A cab driver had refused to carry it: "I don't haul meat." I spent the balance of that day in terror, cradling the jar in my lap (we took a bus), looking into it each time the saline sloshed. It refused to look up. (p. 29)

The imagery would have been at home in an Edgar Allan Poe story; the juxtaposition of the mudane (taking the bus) and the unreal (the heart being sentient and prone to outbursts) serving to underscore the strangeness of the situation. The resolution to this story is emotional, not as it was in the first, but in a way that reminded me of how family members, whether or not their hearts literally act for themselves, clash and bond over crises.

***

But the end of dreams and self-delusions is not necessarily bad. In many respects, the final paragraph to "Apocalyse" could serve as the epigraph for In the Valley of the Kings:

But before the end we will speak once more, of everything that matters: of the brightness of the moon; of the birds still flying dark against the sky; of the man who brought me here; of the hours that she waited; of what wwe would name the child; of the grace of everything that dies; of the love that moves the sun and other stars. (p. 223)

Through it all, In the Valley of the Kings is a true tour de force of exploring the human condition(s). At times, I was reminded of the best of Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Jorge Luis Borges, among others. Holt's prose tantalizes. It hints, it promises, but at the end there are no true revelations within the text itself. It is up to the reader to fill in the spots purposely left blank. It is up to the reader to provide meaning, to establish hope, to ward off despair. Holt's collection simply is great, provocative storytelling at its best and it deserves serious consideration for any and all awards for which it may be eligible.

This collection will also be featured in tomorrow's list of my 25 Favorite Fictions.

Peter Beagle, We Never Talk About My Brother

Some people discovered Peter Beagle through The Last Unicorn or the animated adaptation of it. Others, like myself, did not discover Beagle's work until recently. For myself, We Never Talk About My Brother contains magical story after magical story, with very few dull or uninspired pieces.

I thought so highly of this work that I mailed my only copy overseas so someone very close to me would have the opportunity to read this stunning work without having to wait for years for a translation that might never come. Needless to say, she loved it. All I know is that reading We Never Talk About My Brother has since persuaded me to discover Beagle's novels and that too has been almost as rewarding of an experience.

Brian Evenson, Fugue State

Evenson has released two excellent books this year (the other, the novel Last Days, will be covered tomorrow). In his latest collection, Fugue State, Evenson continues exploring some of the darkest parts of our cultural and personal makeups.

While I did not get the chance to review this at length this summer when I read it, I will be re-reading it carefully in the next couple of months, as I found several of the stories to be so unsettling (in the good sense!) that I want to take my time to reconsider what Evenson is stating here. All I know is that after my cursory first read, I came away impressed with this collection.

Other Collections:

Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe

Caitlín Kiernan, A is for Alien

Zoran Živković, Impossible Stories II

Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes

Julio Cortázar, Papeles inesperados

Otsuichi, ZOO

Any collections that you read this year that merit consideration for future reads from myself or from others?

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

If I had to sum up my experiences with 2009 release anthologies in a single word, "solid" would be the word of choice. However, there would be that hanging "but..." left unsaid but implied. I read more short fiction this year and while I shall not comment at length upon individual works due to my desire to explore certain stories in greater depth in 2010, I will note that when judged as a whole, most of the original anthologies I read this year were comprised mostly of several good, unassuming, competent works, but only a few tales that grabbed my attention. So while there were few outright horrid stories to be found in the eleven original anthologies and three reprint anthologies I read this year, there also were not as many spellbinding tales as I had encountered in years past.

Perhaps part of it is that I did not read as many magazines and e-zines this year as I would wish (a situation that certainly will be rectified in 2010). Perhaps it's just that some of the themes for several of these anthologies did not work. Regardless, 2009 for me was a year in which solid, steady works reigned supreme. So with this said, what anthologies as a whole struck me as being the more enjoyable reading experiences from cover to cover?

Below I shall discuss three at length, followed by a list of the other works that I read. For most of these works (minus the last couple or so), I would recommend with few to no reservations to readers curious about the short form, especially in regards to genre fiction. For most of the rest, some may find the individual stories to be hit-or-miss, but hopefully rewarding ultimately.

Mike Allen (ed.), Clockwork Phoenix 2

This second volume from the small press Norilana Books appealed to me because of its mixture of established and newer short fiction writers. While I will not comment on specific stories for several reasons, I will note that a couple of my favorite short fiction reads for this year came from this original anthology. While this anthology on the surface is unthemed, several of the stories contained here are lyrical paeans to hope, despair, and illusion, among other cardinal emotions. Allen did an excellent job selecting authors whose stories fit together, as the tales were neither monotonous nor were they so heterogeneous as to create a sense of dissonance in the work. This was the best original genre anthology that I read this year.

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (eds.), Best American Fantasy 2

Disclaimer: I will be assisting with the construction of Best American Fantasy 4 in 2010-2011. However, the review excerpt below was written long before I was asked to assist with the upcoming volume.

When the first volume of Best American Fantasy came out in the summer of 2007, I wrote a review praising it for exploring facets of "fantasy" that remained true to the various interpretations of that ancient word while each story managed to avoid feeling repetitive with their motifs, styles, and story progressions. That anthology was one of my favorite anthologies for 2007, but if it contained an Achilles Heel, it would be that in covering so much ground that other best of year anthologies failed to do, there weren't as many readily-identifiable "hook" stories (and writers) that would draw in a casual fan.

In the second iteration of this new anthology series, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer return for a second tour of duty as guest editors, with Matthew Cheney serving as the overall series editor. Unlike the 2007 anthology, Best American Fantasy 2 is a slimmer volume, clocking in at just over 330 pages, compared to BAF1's 450 pages. But in many aspects, this anthology serves as an example of why often less can mean more.

As the VanderMeers note in their introduction, BAF2 contains fewer stories from non-genre sources, due in large part to a seeming lack of interesting fantastical fiction being published in 2007 compared to the 2006 stories that were included in BAF1. Furthermore, the stories follow a more "rigorous" definition of fantasy that excludes for the most part tales that employ fantastical elements as mere metaphor for concrete, mimetic settings. But although this does constrain the possibilities for each story included, this more narrow focus also served to create a greater sense of thematic unity among the included short fictions, as there was not quite as much disparity in styles.

***

On the whole, BAF2 builds upon the elements that I thought made BAF1 a successful new entrant into a rather crowded best of year anthology market. Despite the retooling that narrowed the selections from around 30 to 19, this second volume managed to avoid feeling stagnant. I am curious to see what new directions this series will take in the upcoming third volume, now that Kevin Brockmeier will be the guest editor and that Underland Press will be assuming publishing duties from Prime. If BAF2 is any indication, it will be a different, fresh take on selecting exemplary short fiction of the fantastic.

Although this was the only reprint anthology published in 2009 that I read, I believe BAF2 is worth consideration for the excellent ratio of good stories to merely solid ones.

For years, Conjunctions has been one of the best literary journals in the United States. Unafraid to mix speculative stories with more mimetic tales, this lit journal has for almost 30 years been one of the best and most interesting journals that I have read. Some of its past issues, particularly 39: The New Wave Fabulists, have sparked discussion (and some controversy) among readers and writers from various writing traditions. In this issue, there is some kinship between these stories and those found in issue 39.

When I read it in May, I found myself divided between thinking that there were so many excellent stories in here and believing that there was little to unify those stories into a greater whole. Despite my reservations about the theme of this issue and how well it was executed by the various writers, Betwixt the Between was the best magazine or lit journal that I read this year. For those curious about these stories, individual issues can be ordered via Amazon.

In another lifetime, in another century, I was studying to be a historian. In hindsight, I perhaps should have taken a few years off from my studies, but I was determined to earn my MA in European Cultural and Religious History before I was 24. I did so, graduating in May 1998 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with my MA, but I was so burned out my 18 months of grad school that I have had little desire to read non-fiction, much less critical studies of historical periods, until recently. While I highly doubt that I'll ever return to grad school to earn my Ph.D. in History, at least the lessons I learned during that time have been applied to the evaluation of various non-fictions released this year, most of them related in some form or fashion to speculative works.

However, the nature of these year-end review essays precludes me from going into depth with any of these works, much as I might like to, so below will just be a bare-bones synopsis of each of the books read this year. Of the five 2009 non-fictions that I think are worthy of consideration, one is a Spanish-language history of the ancient Greeks, another is an illustrated essay concerning lists past and present, another focuses on depictions of monsters throughout Western history, a fourth is concerned with reconciling SF with Marxism and the final book aims to give a short overview of the development of this marketed genre called "Fantasy."

Things that go bump in the night. Caterwaulings that chill the hearts and souls of those that hear them. Asymmetrical oddities that skew the "right" and "normal" perspectives of what constitutes "normal." Cold-heart, murderous sons-of-bitches whose thought patterns seem so alien to us. These and more are frequently labeled as being "monstrous," but whence comes these fears and revulsions? Columbia College Chicago Philosophy Professor Stephen T. Asma approaches this often morbidly-fascinating topic from multiple approaches. Dividing his recently-released On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears into four parts (primal fear, theological, scientific/rationalist, and psychological) that roughly correspond with distinct Western historical periods (prehistory/antiquity, medieval, Age of Reason, 20th century), Asma presents a history of monsters in a well-written, concise fashion that raises almost as many questions as it presumes to address.

On Monsters, published by Oxford University Press, is one of those books that contains a bit of something for most everyone. For those with a training in academic (especially cultural history, philosophy, and psychology) disciplines, the copious footnotes found in Asma's book are a treasure trove of information that allows the curious reader to wander further down any rabbit holes that reader might want to explore. For those readers who want an interesting survey of monsterology, this book also serves as an excellent introduction to this topic. Asma's use of personal stories (from his son's alternating fear/fascination with a mendicant hydrocephalic woman in Shanghai to stories that his brother, a public defender for Cook County, Illinois) helps make this text about the inhuman more personal, easier to relate to, or dare I say it, more "human."

Asma approaches the issue of monsters and how our concepts of them in various ways. In his first section, he concentrates on "natural" monsters, creatures whose appearance and sounds may spark evolutionary fight-or-flight responses in us. He opens with the apocryphal letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle detailing his men's fight against successive waves of monsters by a lake in India. He uses this story to highlight how imagination and ingrained fears can magnify or distort natural phenomena into something strange, unnatural, and monstrous. From there, he expands his focus to the religious, concentrating in particular upon the three largest monotheistic faiths today (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and how each contain monsters who attributes are tied into issues of faith, salvation, and damnation. While he does not present anything particular new in his presentation of these issues, Asma manages to make these arguments clear, concise, and perhaps most importantly, interesting to the reader.

Lists are fun. Whether it be goals to do, things to buy, people to meet, enemies to beat, list making is a near-universal activity among humans. From how we order our affairs to how certain religions rank their divine masters, lists also serve as a visual representation of hierarchical arrangements. We just cannot seem to escape this seeming need to classify and to arrange objects, ideas, and people along various schema.

Umberto Eco's latest non-fiction quasi-coffee table book, The Vertigo of Lists (available in the US as The Infinity of Lists), is a continuation of his explorations begun in History of Beautyand On Ugliness. It is in equal parts a celebration of the near-boundless human imagination and a critical look at how we classify and arrange information and how those classifications have shifted and changed with the tides of time. As with the earlier two volumes, The Vertigo of Lists contains several dozen illustrations, literary passages, sculptures, and other material artifacts that serve as visual representations of Western culture and its values over the past five millennia.

Eco organizes this book in a loose chronological order, starting with Achilles' shield and ending up in the realm of Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can illustrations. In-between, he explores notions of how the Sublime was configured in art and literature, how medieval philosophers categorized the world, from the species to the human tongues spoken in all imagined corners of the world. While this book perhaps would have been even stronger if there would have been more (or frankly, any) coverage of African, east Asian, and Amerindian concepts of order and time, for the most part Eco's essays complement the gorgeous artwork and moving literary passages. Eco is very erudite and in his essays on the various aspects and uses of lists over time/space, he demonstrates a depth and clarity of thought that is vital if books such as this will be valued for more than their reproductions of artwork.

Javier Negrete, La Gran Aventura de los Griegos

Negrete is one of those rare writers who can write excellent fiction in a variety of forms, then turn around and write an interesting popular history of the ancient Greeks that is based on the author's years of studies as a Professor of Greek in Spain. Hopefully one day soon this fine work will be translated into English, as Negrete takes an interesting approach to constructing this history.

Utilizing the most current archaeological and historical research, Negrete depicts ancient Greek societies from the archaic period around 2000 BCE to the conquest of Macedonia by the Romans in 146 BCE. Along the way, he covers not just the most exciting military battles (his treatment of the huge naval battle of Salamina, which he also covered in a novel of that same name in 2008, is vivid and fun to read), but also thorny debates regarding the origins of Linear A and B script, the social positions of women in various Greek city-states, and the controversial issues of homosexuality and pederasty in Athens and elsewhere in the Greek world. Although this book is full of endnotes, Negrete has written this history as historia, a wondrous story that anyone (well, anyone that can read and understand Spanish) curious about the Greeks can read and enjoy without having to worry overmuch about not being trained in the finer points of historical debate. This is one of the finer history books of any era, region, or language that I've read in years.

This is a critical study that I did not review when I read it, in part due to time constraints. Hopefully I will get the chance in 2010 to re-read it and review it at length, as the essays that the editors include are interesting. I am somewhat sympathetic to Marxist interpretations of social and cultural histories (it's hard to even conceive of interpreting those fields without at least some awareness of the methodologies that Marxists of all stripes have developed over the past century), but there are several elements in this book that need some closer scrutiny. I seem to recall (it's been several months, thus my memory is fuzzy) that certain elements were overlooked and others were given too short shrift for my liking.
Quibbles aside, Red Planets continues an excellent series of critical SF studies published by Wesleyan Press over the past few years, including Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction by John Rieder (touched upon in last year's review of non-fiction) and Farah Mendlesohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy (also reviewed last year).

Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James, A Short History of Fantasy

Book-length overviews rarely satisfy readers or authors. Either there is too little coverage of an interesting topic (say, the emergence of feminist critiques in secondary-world fantasies) or too much is said of a period that a reader might find to be of less interest than did the writer(s). In a way, such was my experience with A Short History of Fantasy. While I appreciated it for providing a handy reference to influential works of the past 150 years or so, too often I found myself wishing that more coverage was given to the earlier years and not as much to the past 30 years of marketed "Fantasy." Such is the Scylla and the Charybdis that writers of such books have to sail through.
However, this does not mean that this book is without merits. In fact, it is written in a very conversational tone that invites the readers, especially those knowledgeable about certain eras and/or writers, to question the wrtiers' interpretations (and perhaps their own). While doubtless some might find the takes on certain authors to be questionable (I had fun at this site posting excerpts from the book concerning Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, and George R.R. Martin), books such as this serve to spike interest in the field and in certain authors and movements. While A Short History of Fantasy ultimately left me wanting to know more, perhaps in that very wanting the book achieves a major goal, that of creating interest in this wide-ranging speculative narrative mode.

As I just said in my previous post on 2009 books translated into English, this blog perhaps is best-known for its promotion of authors, mimetic and speculative alike, whose works were not written in English. Although I did manage to read close to 100 books in Spanish and over 30 others in French, Portuguese, Italian, and Serbian, most of those works were not released for the first time in 2009. Perhaps I will do a summation in the near future of works read this year that are worthy of readers' considerations that will cover pre-2009 releases in any idiom.

But for now, I guess I should note that there were six books read in 2009 that were not read in English. Four of them are Spanish-language fictions, another is a Spanish non-fiction work that I'll cover in more detail in the section on 2009 non-fictions read, and the final book is a Brazilian anthology of Steampunk stories that I felt was among the best anthologies I read this year. Furthermore, two of the four Spanish-language fictions are actually translations from the original Polish of Andrzej Sapkowski, creating a sort of gray area, since my "translated fictions" post could have covered these translations as well, but since this section is for works not read in English, I guess this is best placement for them.

The variety of books read is as follows: one anthology, one YA fiction not covered in that section since I plan on reviewing it next year or in 2011 when the English translation is available, one popular history of the ancient greeks, one historical novel without magic, another historical novel with magic, and one epic fantasy work. Since there will be reviews in 2010 of the two Sapkowski and since I'll be covering Javier Negrete's excellent history of the ancient greeks elsewhere, most of the book-specific comments will be limited to just a couple of prior reviews reproduced in excerpts.

Christian-Muslim relations have never been easy, history bearing witness to attacks by partisans of both religions, with the attendant martyrs and villains. Nowhere is this more evident than in Spain, where for almost 900 years the Reconquista was waged to win back the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim control, culminating in the expulsion of the Moors and Jews from the Iberian peninsula in 1609.

Spanish author Ildefonso Falcones sets out to explore the tensions that existed in late 16th century Spain in his new novel, La Mano de Fátima. Over the course of over 900 pages, Falcones covers the period from the Alpujarras revolt of 1568-1571 to the 1609 expulsion through the character of Hernando Ruiz. Young Hernando, the offspring of the rape of a Moorish woman by a Catholic priest, serves as a small-scale representation of the divisions that rent Spain after the fall of Granada in 1492. Rejected by his fellow Moors as being a "Nazarene"and condemned to be treated as a Moor by the Christians due to his crypto-Muslim Morisco culture (public Muslim practices being banned in 1499), Hernando bears witness to the mutual distrust that Morisco and Spaniard alike felt toward one another.

***

There are three main conflicts in this story: 1) Hernando’s wavering commitment to the Moriscos and the crypto-Muslim faith that they hold, 2) Hernando’s treatment by both the Christian Spaniards and the Moriscos, and 3) Hernando’s relationships with Fatima and certain other people later in life. Falcones does an excellent job with the first two, with the exception of the main "villain" of Brahim, whose character rarely fails to rise above that of an implacable, diabolical foe of Hernando and of his desire for peace between the faiths. It is in the third main conflict, that between Hernando and those closest to him, where Falcones falters.

In large part, this is due to the 41-year span of the novel. In attempting to illustrate the atmosphere of the times and how attitudes began to change toward the Moriscos after the failed Alpujarras revolt, Falcones unfortunately padded the novel in places, creating quite a few turns and introducing a new character dynamic that feels a bit forced after the action of the first few hundred pages. As a result, important characters fade away for long stretches, reappearing only fitfully until the final scenes, where their reemergence feels forced and underdeveloped.

Yet despite this, La Mano de Fátima contains several moving passages that speak to the hope of Hernando (and presumably, of Falcones) for a more peaceful co-existence between the Christian West and the Muslim East. Hernando, despite the unevenness of the second half of the novel, serves as an excellent reminder just what was lost when Christianity and Islam began their ideological war, as well as the hope that many adherents of both faiths have for a reconciliation. Falcones’ novel, coming as it does on the 400th anniversary of the expulsion of the Moors, bears witness to the optimistic faith and tolerance that those like Hernando have managed to uphold in the face of the tumults of the past few centuries.

In many senses, steampunk is the one of the first truly "international" subgenres of speculative fiction, as its appeal quickly spread from one country to the next, without a single country or language region dominating the literary landscape. In the past twenty years or so, ever since K.W. Jeter's use of the term "steampunk" in a 1987 letter to Locus to describe this nascent movement, steampunk literary and fashion circles have sprung up in cities all across the globe. It truly is an international movement, one that adapts to fit the needs of each country's literary scenes.

This certainly was the case with the release this summer in Brazil of Steampunk: Histórias de um Passado Extraordinário (Steampunk: Stories of an Extraordinary Past would be a good English translation of the title). Edited by Gianpaolo Celli and published by the São Paulo publisher Tarja, this original anthology of nine stories written by several of Brazil's leading SF writers serves to highlight not just Brazilian interpretations of what constitutes "steampunk," but also that this emerging world power has the potential in the next few decades, as linguistic and trade barriers continue to fall, to play a larger role in the rapidly-growing global SF conversation.

I read each of these stories three times over the past four months, since my reading fluency in Portuguese is less than that of Spanish. What I discovered with each read is that most of these stories took on additional layers of meaning for me. There is no single common approach to telling a steampunk story in this collection. Some stories, such as the opening "O Assalto ao Trem Pagador" are a bit more heavy on overt action involving steam-driven trains, boats, and dirigibles than some of the others, but there are certain nuances in the writing that refer more specifically to issues of Brazilian history. In the footnotes to Romeu Martins' "Cidade Phantástica," the author refers to how the character João Fumaça has been utilized by other authors, including an alt-history where Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay lost the 1864-1970 War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay. In Jacques Barcia's "Uma Vída Possível Atrás dad Barricadas," Barcia references the long-standing popularity of communists among the proletariat.

These are elements that are often downplayed in much of North American and British steampunk literature. Yet the 19th century was certainly a time of social unrest, so when reading these stories, I found myself curious to know more about the root causes that the authors referenced in passing. Fábio Fernandes' "Uma Breve História da Maquinidade" goes a step further, as he utilizes fictional characters such as Doctor Frankenstein to underscore just how stratified social classes were in the 19th century in Europe and the Americas. António Luiz M.C. Costa's "A Flor do Estrume"in many ways was the most mysterious story in this collection. Referencing the 19th century Brazilian writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis,who wrote a fictional memoir of Brás Cubas, his story was the one where I felt lost at times, not because his writing was poor (if anything, the quality of the writing was almost uniformly high in this collection), but because there were references to Brazilian history that I did not know well, if at all.

***

Most of these tales were very enjoyable to read and the undercurrents noted above never threatened to overwhelm the stories being told. Although there were a couple of stories that didn't work as well for me as did the others, Steampunk: Histórias de um Passado Extraordinário is one of the most taut and enjoyable anthologies that I have read in 2009 in any language. Hopefully, in the coming decade, the writers that appear in this collection will see more of their stories translated into various languages (from what I recall, several already have appeared in English and Romanian translations at least). There appears to be a growing, if still somewhat small, SF culture developing in Brazil. I suspect with time, that several of these writers will craft new narratives of Brazil that will challenge not just current Anglo-centric conceptions of that emerging power, but which will influence global conversations on steampunk and SF fiction.

Other Works to be Covered in Other Sections or in Future Reviews:

Rafael Ábalos, Grimpow y la bruja de la estirpe (second volume in a YA series that I thought was one of the more enjoyable ones I read in 2007).

Andrzej Sapkowski, Narrenturm (first volume in his Hussite Wars trilogy where magic exists with the religious struggles of the early 15th century); La dama del lago, vol. 1 (the first half of the original last volume in La saga de Geralt, which I'll review once the second half appears, hopefully sometime in 2010).

Javier Negrete, La Gran Aventura de los Griegos (non-fiction that will be covered in that section)

Rightly or wrongly, this blog over the past few years has earned a reputation for covering fictions written in the non-Anglophone regions of the world. Although most of my readings are in the original languages (mainly Spanish, but now also Portuguese, French, and Italian with very little aid and Serbian with lots of aid required), there are several books I read each year that have been translated into English. However, the majority of those books weren't published in 2009, so after looking through my written-down list of books read this year, there were only seven books published in 2009 that were originally written in another language that I read this year. One book that I read last year and reviewed, Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction, was not read this year, but it deserves a mention and a link back to the original review posted in November 2008.

Due to time constraints, I will not be able to discuss at length just why the following fictions are worthy of being read, but I will try and sum things up succinctly for three works and list the others as honorable mentions. Despite my preference for Romance language readings when I'm not reading in English, there is only a single French-language original (by an American-born author, no less!) among the works I've read. Two others were originally written in Serbian, another in Czech, with three others first being published in Japanese. The stories range from having the feel of a Kafka or Borges to SF thrillers to something that touches upon the horrors of the worst act of genocide in human history. If anything, these books represent the diversity of storytelling as much as they illustrate just how many national fictions are becoming available in English translation.

Michael Ajvaz, The Other City

This short novel is hard to describe. It is on the surface a sort of alt-Prague, a world within itself where some of the more macabre musings that a Kafka could have dreamt co-exist with everyday people. Ajvaz's writing is very surreal at times, creating a haunting atmosphere that stays with the reader long after the final pages are written.But this is merely a reaction, not a review. I did not write a formal review for this one because I would have preferred to have re-read this a few more time before I would feel comfortable with the notion of wrestling with its prose, its layers of meaning, and with its use of Prague as a sort of meta-character here. But for those of you willing to take a chance on discovering some excellent Central European literature, The Other City certainly is among the best that I've read in recent years.

Zoran Živković, Impossible Stories II

Živković has been a favorite of mine for five years now. His stories, whether they be novels like The Fourth Circle or Hidden Camera or "story suites" like Impossible Stories or its sequel Impossible Stories II, are simultaneously simple and complex. Simple in the sense that the characters are easy to relate to, the prose is clear and uncluttered, with the ultimate effect being a quick read.

However, there are multiple layers to his stories. While readers may get caught up in just how "effortless" the story feels, once one pays closer attention, there is much that is transpiring under the surface. Things are not always as they seem. And in Impossible Stories II, there are a number of repeating themes that surface in surprising ways as the reader continues reading the "suites." Živković rarely hits a wrong note or has a false step in the course of telling these stories, illustrating perhaps that sometimes a well-told tale just might still be one of the most effective ways of communication around.

Almost 64 years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, the Shoah/Endlösung/Holocaust (each of those words bearing its own indelible image) remains an extremely controversial topic. From those like David Irving who have tried to downplay (if not deny outright) the horrors of the situation to those like Daniel Goldhagen, who in his 1996 book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, sought to spread even further the blame for the atrocities against the Jews to those who note that the very real sufferings of the millions of other ethnic groups, such as the Gypsies, need to be brought to the spotlight, how one chooses to discuss the events of 1933-1945 can easily will determine who will condemn and who will praise that intrepid soul. It is little surprise, therefore, that American/French writer Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones has drawn fierce criticism and received lavish praise from writers and critics in both France and the United States over the past three years.

The Kindly Ones is a fictional first-person narrative of the Alsatian factory owner (and former Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (SD) officer) Dr. Maximilien Aue, as he writes a quasi-confessional memoir from the vantage point of at least 30 years after the war. Over the course of this nearly 1000 page narrative, Littell's Aue rambles, digresses, retrenches, emphasizing before decentering his actions during World War II on the Russian front. There might be a dozen pages or more devoted to his relationships with both men and women, followed by a paragraph or two that seemingly glosses over the death and suffering of millions of Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs.

For many readers, Littell's prose will be unsettling. Aue, by nature of his office as a SD officer in the Nazi SS, will leave many readers uncomfortable just by knowing that they are reading about some of the 20th century's worst deeds from the point of view of one of the perpetrators. Others will find details of Aue's personal life, from his bisexuality to the gradual uncovering of the specifics behind the one "loving" relationship in his life (and I put "loving" in quotes, because the nature of that relationship is very debatable, to say the least) to be disturbing. I myself could understand why others would be at unease reading about these events from Aue's perspective, but I found myself drawn further and further into the narrative due to how Littell chose to tell this story.

***

As an account of the Holocaust and how "ordinary" people can get caught up in such actions, Littell's novel is provocative and for the most part, rings true. As a narrative, there are several weak points, starting with Aue's inconsistency as a character. By this, I am referring more to how "strong" he is in relation to the events he narrates, as often I felt as though Aue "disappeared" for dozens of pages at a time. Also, I have to question the effectiveness of having Aue be a closeted bisexual, as well as how his relationships with family members were depicted. I believe that Littell loses some of the power of his novel by having Aue take on characteristics that make it easier to view him as a pervert or a monster than it would have been if he had been an "everyman" character whose actions during the course of the novel would have forced readers to confront more directly the idea that they too could easily have been caught up in the hatred and the killing of former friends and neighbors.

While the mythic Kindly Ones do not make an appearance at all until the final page, The Kindly Ones does give hints of the tortures that Aue faces as a result of his sometimes-passive participation in the Final Solution. It is a shame, however, that it took so long for Littell to build to that point. Yet despite the rambling, digressive narrative, despite the inconsistencies of Aue's character, despite the difficulty in accepting the premise behind Aue, The Kindly Ones is a powerful work. Messy, disturbing, and more than a little graphic in places with its scatological and sexual references, Littell's novel deserves praise for its attempts to tackle an event that is still an explosive minefield for anyone trying to unravel its mysteries. It is a mess, but it is a glorious, necessary mess and for that alone readers ought to read it. Just don't be surprised if virulent reactions follow.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

This list is going to be shorter than usual, in part because I reviewed two of the books earlier and in part because I don't have as much to say about some of these as I wished, based on having read them months ago and not having a copy at hand to refresh my memory. So I think I'll limit this to four pieces and two honorable mentions. Oh, and I should note that I did not read many debuts (American, mass-release, or otherwise) this year. One of those statistical anomalies, I guess. Sure next year will see more debuts read.

Lately, there has been a trend to glamorize the rogues and thieves of the world. Whether it's via films such as the Ocean's series or through caper novels like Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora, the violent perpetrators of theft and bodily harm have been made more palatable for those reading or viewing their stories. Underneath the advertised "grit" for these type of tales is generally found a romanticization of these law-breaking transgressors.

Jesse Bullington's The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart eschews this softening of the rogue's image into something that is acceptable. Instead, his two fictional brother, Hegel and Manfried Grossbart, are just downright murderous, thieving SOBs who are not glamorized at all in this swift-moving 432 page debut novel. Although they might be witty on occasion, passages such as the one quoted above illustrate just how black-hearted and cruel their wit is. Shaft may have been a bad mo'fo, but these two are bad mo'fos without the lovable charm.

Bullington grounds his story in mid-14th century Central Europe. Beginning in 1364, 15 years after the last vestiges of the terrible Black Death plague have struck fear (and death) into the hearts of millions of peasants, the story of the Grossbarts integrates its setting almost seamlessly into the narrative. It is a time that produced the fear and paranoia that a century later led to Kramer and Sprenger's infamous Malleus Maleficarum being produced. Belief in witches and demons, with Satan at their head appearing in various guises, was rampant and as the novel develops, these complex intersections of orthodox Catholic belief and popular superstition inform and enliven many of the Grossbart adventures.

***

When I finished the novel last night, I was sad that there were no more pages left to read. I usually don't like caper or anti-hero novels that much, or at least those that bowdlerize the dark aspects of such characters, but The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart grabbed my attention from the first page and I had to keep reading until the final page. This is the best 2009 debut novel that I've read, hands down.

Gail Carriger, Soulless

This is a hard debut to classify. There are elements of urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and steampunk inside this paperback original, but the effect is something that feels organic and not a Frankenstein's monster of disparate narrative modes. While doubtless there will be those who will decry the romance elements or believe that Carriger does nothing original plot-wise, I would beg to differ. What Carriger does very well here is to create a vivacious, often-amusing character whose quirky personality serves to underscore just how odd it would have been to have vampires and werewolves at Queen Victoria's service in the 19th century. Carriger's prose is often droll and sometimes hilarious, creating an effect that won me over despite my initial hesitation to read this novel. For this alone, it is among the best debuts that I've read this year.

Mark Charan Newton, Nights of Villjamur

Newton's appearance on this list may seem to be strange, since he did have a limited-release novel appear in Great Britain a year or so ago, plus his first novel to appear in the US will not debut until mid-2010. Nevertheless, since I'm an American and I read this novel in 2009 for the first time, I'll include it here.

Nights of Villjamur is an interesting hybrid novel. Combining elements of dying earth fiction with "weird" fiction (this is more apparent in his second novel, City of Ruin, of which I have read the first 100 pages or so in draft form before work demands deprived me of any real chance to resume reading it), Nights of Villjamur is a promising opening to a fantasy series. Atmospheric, the novel at times suffers from inconsistently-developed characters, but on the whole, the narrative showed enough promise (since confirmed by what I've read of the second book) to merit a place on my list of best 2009 debuts.

Peter Brett's debut novel, The Warded Man, is the opening volume to an epic fantasy trilogy that contains many familiar elements. Civilization has collapsed into a brute, subsistence-farming level after the return of the corelings, demonic creatures that arise each night from the land's Core to pillage and reave, three centuries before after more than a millennium's absence. The only thing protecting the remnants of human societies are mysterious ciphers called Wards, which serve to repel various demon attacks. However, these Wards have gaps and each night becomes a struggle to survive, with dawn a time of both hope and mourning. Throughout this novel, Brett does a very good job highlighting the terrors that night brings, with passages similar to the one quoted above serving to remind readers of the terror that the characters experience every day of their lives.

***

So while Brett utilizes the clichéd Warrior, Healer, and Bard archtypes for his three main characters, his efforts to make each of them conflicted, hurt characters who desire their own form of deliverance works to such an extent that for most of this novel, I found myself curious to see what would develop next and how each character would grow from their experiences. While these arcs are kept separate for most of the novel, when they come together in the final section, it feels more like the Warded Man has well-rounded, dynamic characters around him rather than a Hero with boon companions whose personalities are paper-thin representations.

However, there are some weaknesses with this novel. While the pacing and characterization generally are excellent, at times each falters, particularly in the last section. The omnious tone set by the early chapters fades a bit too much, especially once the Warded Man appears and the demonic corelings are being slaughtered. That narrative tension is lost and while I suspect (as did the characters themselves later on) that these elemental corelings are but the foot soldiers to the real threat looming over the final section, it did lessen the effect created by the horrific attacks shown in each character arc prior to the final section. Characterwise, I felt Brett rushed too quickly into a situation involving Leesha, as it seemed to me that he didn't remain as "true" to her developed character as he could have. Going to great pains to show her reluctance to conform to her village's sexual/moral double standards, only to reverse course to bring two characters together was a bit too abrupt for my tastes, although it must be noted that it wasn't simply just two bodies meeting and then crashing together in coition minutes later. Still, a bit more time developing a tension between these characters would have improved the plot and character dynamics.

The novel concludes on a cliffhanger of sorts, as there appears a challenger for the role that readers might have presumed one of the three main characters had assumed. I found it to be a natural ending point, one that leaves me curious to read what happens in the second volume, The Desert Spear, due out by the end of the year. Hopefully, Brett will show continued development as a writer, as The Warded Man, while imperfect in places, showed enough promise as to give me hope that Brett will emerge as one of the few must-read epic fantasy writers for me. Very good debut effort.

Other noteworthy debut novels read this year:

Mark Teppo, Lightbreaker

Amanda Downum, The Drowning City
So yes, these are the debuts I read this year. Perhaps you have read others that are worthy of consideration? If so, which books would make your own 2009 debuts list?